This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over
the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a
variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction,
popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the
Francophone novel and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary
history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close
reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres
and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This
companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further
reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the
modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it.
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Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
THE CAMBRIDGE
C O M P A N I O N TO
THE FRENCH NOVEL
From 1800 to the present
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS TO LITERATURE
The Cambridge Companion to Old English
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The Cambridge Companion to the French
Novel
From 1800 to the present
edited by Timothy Unwin
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THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO
THE FRENCH NOVEL
From 1800 to the present
EDITED BY
TIMOTHY UNWIN
University of Liverpool
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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© Cambridge University Press 1997
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First published 1997
Typeset in Sabon 10/13 PtA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
The Cambridge companion to the French novel: From 1800 to the present / edited
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p. cm. - (Cambridge companions to literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o 521 49563 6 (hardback) - ISBN o 521 49914 3 (paperback)
1. French fiction - 20th century - History and criticism.
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CE
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
CONTENTS
page ix
xiii
xv
xxii
xxiii
Notes on contributors
Preface
Chronology
Note on literary prizes
Note on presentation
1
On the novel and the writing of literary history
i
TIMOTHY UNWIN
2
3
Novels of testimony and the 'invention' of the modern French novel
JANNMATLOCK
16
Reality and its representation in the nineteenth-century novel
36
ALISON FINCH
4
Women and fiction in the nineteenth century
54
MARGARET COHEN
5
Popular fiction in the nineteenth century
73
DAVID COWARD
6
Decadence and the fin-de-siecle novel
93
LAURENCE M. PORTER
7
The Proustian revolution
111
CHRISTIE MCDONALD
8
Formal experiment and innovation
DAVID H. WALKER
126
Vll
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
CONTENTS
9 Existentialism, engagement, ideology
145
STEVEN UNGAR
10 War and the Holocaust
161
DENIS BOAK
11 From serious to popular
fiction
179
STEPHEN F. NOREIKO
12 The colonial and postcolonial Francophone novel
FRANgOISELIONNET
194
13 The French-Canadian novel
214
DENIS BOAK
14 Gender and sexual identity in the modern French novel
JANE WINSTON
223
15 Postmodern Frenchfiction:practice and theory
242
JOHNNIE GRATTON
261
264
General bibliography
Index
vi 11
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
DENIS BOAK is a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Western
Australia, where he held the Chair of French from 1975 to 1995. Since 1975
he has been the Editor of the journal Essays in French Literature. He has
published books on Martin du Gard, Malraux, Romains and Sartre.
is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at New
York University. Her publications include Profane Illumination: Walter
Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution (Berkeley, 1993) and
Spectacles of Realism - Body, Gender, Genre (Minneapolis, 1995) which she
co-edited with Christopher Prendergast. She is currently completing Why
Were There No French Women Realists} which will be forthcoming from
Princeton University Press in 1998.
MARGARET COHEN
is Professor of Modern French Literature at the University of
Leeds. He has written studies of Restif de la Bretonne, Marivaux, Duras and
Pagnol, translated Maupassant, Sade and Albert Cohen, edited numerous
novels by Dumas pere, and is currently writing a History of French Literature.
He is a frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement.
DAVID COWARD
isa Fellow and Tutor in French at Merton College, Oxford. She is
the author of Proust's Additions (Cambridge, 1977), Stendhal: La Chartreuse
de Parme (London, 1984), Concordance de Stendhal (Leeds, 1991), and a
number of essays on post-1800 French literature. She is currently working on
nineteenth-century French women's writing.
ALISON FINCH
lectures in French at University College Dublin. He is the
author of studies on Breton, Colette, Proust, Barthes and Sarraute, and is
co-editor of Modern French Short Fiction (Manchester, 1994) and of the
forthcoming La Nouvelle hier et aujourd'hui.
J O H N N I E GRATTON
FRANCOiSE LiONNET teaches French and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University. She is the author of Autobiographical Voices: Race,
Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, 1989) and Postcolonial Representations:
Women, Literature, Identity (Ithaca, 1995). She is co-editor of 'Post/Colonial
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Conditions: Exiles, Migrations, Nomadisms', Yale French Studies 82-3
(1993), and Tostcolonial, Indigenous, and Emergent Feminisms', Signs
is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at
Harvard University. She is the author of Scenes of Seduction: Prostitution,
JANN MATLOCK
Hysteria, and Reading Difference in Nineteenth-Century France (New York,
1994) and co-editor, with Marjorie Garber and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, of
Media Spectacles (New York, 1993). She is currently completing a book on
vision and aesthetics in nineteenth-century France, entitled Desires to Censor,
and a collection of essays on the relationship of literary and historical study,
Purloined Longings: Letters from the Archives.
is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at
Harvard University. She is the author of The Dialogue of Writing (Waterloo,
Ont., 1985), Dispositions (Montreal, 1986) and The Proustian Fabric
(Lincoln, NE 1991).
CHRISTIE MCDONALD
NOREiKO is Lecturer in French at the University of Hull. An expert
on popular French language and culture, in particular detective fiction, he has
written about various aspects of French, as well as publishing studies on
Djian, Perec and Queneau. He is Founder Editor of the Cahiers of the
Association for French Language Studies.
STEPHEN F.
is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at
Michigan State University, where he received the Distinguished Faculty
Award in 1995. He has published ninety articles and book chapters on all
periods of European, African and Latin American literature. His eight books
include The Crisis of French Symbolism (New York, 1990), nominated by
Cornell University Press for the James Russell Lowell prize.
LAURENCE M. PORTER
STEVEN UNGAR,
Professor of French and Comparative Literature at The Uni-
versity of Iowa, is the author of Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire
(Lincoln, NE 1983) and Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France since
1930 (Minneapolis, 1995). He is co-editor (with Betty R. McGraw) of Signs
in Culture: Roland Barthes Today (Iowa City, 1989) and (with Tom Conley)
of Identity Papers: Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France
(Minneapolis, 1996). He is completing a study on culture and renewal in
Popular Front France.
James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool, is the author of numerous studies on nineteenth-century French writers.
TIMOTHY UNWIN,
His books include Constant: 'Adolphe' (London, 1986), Art et infini: Vceuvre
de jeunesse de Gustave Flaubert (Amsterdam, 1991) and Verne: (Le Tour du
monde en quatre-vingts jours' (Glasgow, 1992).
is Professor of French at the University of Sheffield. He has
written on and edited works by Camus, Genet and Robbe-Grillet. In addition
DAVID H. WALKER
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
to numerous articles, he has published two books on Gide: Andre Gide
(London, 1990) and Gide: sLes Nourritures terrestres' and 'La Symphonie
pastorale' (London, 1990). He is also the editor of Albert Camus: les extremes
et Vequilibre (Amsterdam, 1994) and the author of Outrage and Insight:
Modern French Writers and the 'fait divers' (London, 1995). He has
contributed to reference works including the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the International Dictionary of Theatre and the New Oxford
Companion to Literature in French.
is Assistant Professor of French at Northwestern University where
she also teaches in the Women's Studies programme. Her recent publications
include 'Forever Feminine: Marguerite Duras and Her Critics' (New Literary
History 24 (1993), 467-82), 'Marguerite Duras: Marxism, Feminism,
Writing' (Theatre journal 47 (1995), 345-65), and 'Autour de la rue SaintBenott: An Interview with Dionys Mascolo' (Contemporary French Culture
18:2 (1994), 188-207). She is currently completing a book on Duras. Other
research interests include feminist, postcolonial and queer theories and
contemporary women's writing.
JANE WINSTON
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
PREFACE
This book seeks to give a broad overview of developments in the French
novel over approximately the last two centuries, and to provide the student
or general reader with a challenging yet user-friendly work of reference.
The modern French novel is a vast subject, the contours of which are
constantly being redefined, and the aim here is not to give complete
coverage to it or to do justice to every major novelist. Rather, each of the
fifteen chapters of this volume presents insights into an area or problem, or
an author or group of authors, combining background information with
up-to-date critical perspectives and debate. Each of the contributors has
been encouraged to offer an individual approach. Some concentrate on
close readings of a few texts, others give a broader historical sweep, or
introduce a more theoretical dimension; and some offer a variety of
different perspectives within the space allotted. However, all are concerned
to open up pathways for the reader and to provide a companionable
introduction rather than a definitive scholarly statement. Suggestions for
further reading will be found after each chapter, and the main bibliography
at the end of the volume lists manuals and works which will guide the
reader towards a fuller knowledge of the field, or of particular aspects of it.
The contributors to this volume were not only working within strict
space limitations; they were also working to tight deadlines. My thanks go
out to them all for their cheerful acceptance of, and for the most part
adherence to, the constraints which this task imposed. I have enjoyed their
enthusiastic co-operation, benefited from their knowledge and wisdom,
and enjoyed meeting many of them, either virtually or in my real travels
across three continents during the period of composition of this volume.
Special thanks are due to the (mainly anonymous) reviewers of the early
plans. Their suggestions were gratefully and liberally incorporated into
subsequent plans, and I trust that the final product is much the better for
their interventions. I should like also to record sincere thanks to my former
colleagues in the French Department at the University of Western Australia,
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
PREFACE
whose intellectual and moral support was invaluable at the inception of
this project. While at the University of Western Australia, I was the
recipient of a research award which enabled me to take time off teaching to
carry out editorial duties and the writing of my own chapter. I would like
here to record my thanks to that institution for its generous and vigorous
promotion of travel and research.
Two individuals should also be singled out for thanks. Kate Brett of
Cambridge University Press was the initiator of this project. Her advice
was invaluable, her good humour unfailing, and the volume owes a great
deal to her. Linda Bree then took over the editorial task in the final stages,
and saw it through to completion with admirable care and wisdom. I trust
that the end product is an expression of their editorial skills. Errors and
lacunae remain my responsibility.
Finally, I should like to thank Michael, Alice and Anthony Unwin whose
enveloping mirth was, and always is, the best antidote to the solemnity
resulting from a long task.
Timothy Unwin
xiv
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CHRONOLOGY
1800
Mme de Stael, De la litterature.
1802
Birth of Hugo. Mme de Stael, Delphine.
1804
Bonaparte crowned Emperor. Birth of George Sand.
1807
Mme de Stael, Corinne.
1814
Napoleon's first abdication followed by First Restoration.
1815
The 100 Days. Waterloo. Second Restoration.
1816
Constant, Adolphe.
1817
Death of Mme de Stael.
1820
Assassination of the due de Berry.
1821
Death in exile of Napoleon. Birth of Flaubert.
1823
Mme de Duras, Ourika.
1824
Death of Louis XVIII.
1825
Coronation of Charles X.
1830
The July Revolution. Louis-Philippe, roi des Francais. Death of
Constant. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir. Relaxation of censorship
laws.
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CHRONOLOGY
1831
Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris. Balzac, La Peau de chagrin.
1832
Cholera epidemic. Sand, Indiana. Death of Goethe and Walter
Scott.
1833
Sand, Lelia.
1835
Balzac, Le Pere Goriot.
1836
First stirrings of popular press.
1837
Queen Victoria to the British throne. Opening of the Paris-Saint
Germain railway line.
1839
Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme.
1840
Birth of Zola.
1842
Death of Stendhal.
1844
Dumas pere, Les Trois Mousquetaires.
1846
Balzac, La Cousine Bette.
1848
Louis-Philippe flees after February Revolution. Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte elected President of the Republic. Marx and Engels,
Communist Party Manifesto. Death of Chateaubriand.
1849
Sand, La Petite Fadette.
1850
Death of Balzac.
1851
(December) Coup d'Etat. Louis-Napoleon becomes Emperor
Napoleon III. Second Empire commences.
1856
Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
18 6z
Hugo, Les Miserables.
1863
Fromentin, Dominique. Start of publication of Littre's
Dictionnaire. Salon des Refuses.
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CHRONOLOGY
1867
Marx, Das Kapital.
1869
Opening of Suez Canal. Flaubert, UEducation sentimentale. Birth
of Gide.
1870
Franco-Prussian War. Death of Dumas pere.
1871
Peace with Prussia. The Commune.
1872
Verne, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours.
1873
Birth of Colette.
1876
Death of Sand.
1877
Zola, UAssommoir.
1878
Exposition universelle in Paris.
1879
La Marseillaise becomes national anthem.
1880
Death of Flaubert.
1881
Birth of Picasso.
1883
Brunetiere, Le Roman naturaliste. Maupassant, Une vie.
1884
Legalisation of divorce in France. Huysmans, A rebours. Rachilde,
Monsieur Venus.
1885
Zola, Germinal. Death of Hugo.
1886
Opening of the Statue of Liberty in New York.
1889
Eiffel Tower completed for the Exposition universelle.
1894
Condemnation of Dreyfus.
1895
First film projection by the Lumiere brothers.
1898
Zola, 'J'accuse'.
xvii
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CHRONOLOGY
1900
International Socialist Congress in Paris. Opening of first Metro
line. Colette, Claudine a Vecole. Freud, The Interpretation of
Dreams (trans, into French 1926).
1902
Gide, Ulmmoraliste. Death of Zola.
1903
First airborne flight by the Wright brothers. First Prix Goncourt
awarded to Force ennemie by J.-A. Nau.
1905
Birth of Sartre.
1909
Bleriot: first flight across the Channel.
1911
Marie Curie wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
1912
The Titanic sinks.
1913
Einstein, Theory of Relativity. Alain-Fournier, he GrandMeaulnes. Martin du Gard, Jean Barois. Proust, Du cote de chez
Swann.
1914
Start of First World War. Gide, Les Caves du Vatican.
1915
Absinthe made illegal. Romain Rolland wins Nobel Prize for
Literature.
1916
Saussure, Cours de linguistique generale. Barbusse, he Feu
(winner of Prix Goncourt).
1917
Freud, Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
1918
Armistice signed on 11 November.
1919
Treaty of Versailles. Proust, A Vombre des jeunes filles en fleur
(winner of Prix Goncourt).
1920
Colette, Cheri.
1921
Nobel Prize for Literature to Anatole France. Start of regular radio
broadcasts from Eiffel Tower.
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CHRONOLOGY
1922
Martin du Gard, first volume of Les Thibault (final volume 1940).
James Joyce, Ulysses.
1924
Breton, Manifeste du surrealisme.
1925
Hitler, Mein Kampf.
1926
Gide, Les Faux-Monnayeurs.
1927
First speaking films: Greta Garbo plays Anna Karenina. Mauriac,
Therese Desqueyroux. Proust, Le Temps retrouve.
1929
The Wall Street Crash. Colette, Sido. Saint-Exupery, Courtier Sud.
1930
Simenon, Pietr le Letton (first Maigret novel).
1931
Nizan, Aden, Arable. Saint-Exupery, Vol de nuit.
1932
First television images broadcast in Paris. Celine, Voyage au bout
de la nuit. Mauriac, Le Noeud de viperes. Romains, first volume of
Les Hommes de bonne volonte (final volume 1947).
1933
Malraux, La Condition humaine. Mauriac, Le Romancier et ses
personnages.
X934
J e a n Renoir, film of Madame Bovary.
1937
Exposition universelle in Paris. Spanish Civil War. Martin du Gard
wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
1938
Nizan, La Conspiration. Sartre, La Nausee.
1939
Declaration of War on Germany by Britain and France (3
September).
1942
Camus, UEtrangery Le Mythe de Sisyphe.
1943
Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince.
1944
Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs.
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
CHRONOLOGY
1945
Defeat of Germany. Death of Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt. First
atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Sartre, first volume of Les Chemins de
la liberte (final volume published 1949).
1946
Beginning of Indochina War. First Cannes Film Festival.
1947
Gide wins Nobel Prize for Literature. Beckett, Murphy (French
translation). Camus, La Peste.
1949
Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sexe.
1950
Start of Korean War. Duras, Un barrage contre le Pacifique.
Nationwide television broadcasting begins in France.
1951
Gracq, Le Rivage des Syrtes (refuses to accept Prix Goncourt).
Death of Gide.
1952
Mauriac wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
1953
Barthes, Le Degre zero de Vecriture. Camara Laye, UEnfant noir.
1954
Algerian War begins.
1955
Chraibi, Les Boucs.
1956
Butor, L'Emploi du temps. Camus, La Chute. Sarraute, L'Ere du
soupqon.
1957
Founding of Common Market. Camus wins Nobel Prize for
Literature. Butor, La Modification. Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie.
1958
Beginning of Fifth Republic. Duras, Moderato Cantabile.
1959
Queneau, Zazie dans le metro. Sarraute, Le Planetarium.
1960
Camus killed in car accident.
1961
Construction of Berlin Wall. Yuri Gagarin first man in space.
1963
Assassination of President Kennedy. Robbe-Grillet, Pour un
nouveau roman.
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CHRONOLOGY
1964
Sartre refuses Nobel Prize for Literature.
1968
Student insurrection and general strike in France. Assassination of
Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy. The 'Prague Spring'.
Modiano, La Place de Vetoile.
1969
De Gaulle resigns. Beckett wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
1970
Cixous, Le Troisieme Corps. Anne Hebert, Kamouraska.
Tournier, Le Roi des Aulnes (winner of Prix Goncourt).
1973
End of Vietnam War. Yourcenar, Souvenirs pieux.
1975
Emile Ajar (Romain Gary), La Vie devant soi (winner of Prix
Goncourt).
1978
Modiano, Rue des boutiques obscures. Perec, La Vie mode
d'emploi.
1979
Antonine Maillet, Pelagie-la-Charrette (first Canadian to win Prix
Goncourt).
1980
Death of Roland Barthes and Jean-Paul Sartre.
1981
Frangois Mitterrand elected President (re-elected 1988).
1984
Duras, UAmant (winner of Prix Goncourt).
1985
Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Claude Simon. Destruction
of Berlin Wall.
1992
Daniel Pennac, Comme un roman. Passage through French
parliament of Jacques Toubon's projet de hi relatif a la langue
francaise.
T995
Jacques Chirac elected President. Andrei Makine, Le Testament
francais (first novel to win both the Prix Goncourt and Prix
Medicis).
1996
Death of Francois Mitterrand.
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
NOTE ON LITERARY PRIZES
The 'big six' literary prizes in France have an extremely high profile and
are, significantly, all awarded for novels. The best known and most
prestigious is the Prix Goncourt, named after the Goncourt brothers Jules
and Edmond. It is likely to boost an author's sales figures hugely
(Marguerite Duras's L'Amant, the 1984 winner, eventually sold 1.5 million
copies). First awarded in 1903, the Goncourt has included Proust, Malraux
and Tournier among its winners - though noticeably absent from the list
are Celine, Camus, Sartre and Yourcenar. Gracq, nominated for the prize in
1951 for Le Rivage des Syrtes, refused it. The other major literary prizes
are the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Academie Francaise, the Prix Femina
(awarded by a jury of women, though not necessarily to a female novelist),
the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Interallie and the Prix Medicis. In 1995 Andrei'
Makine's Le Testament frangais became the first novel to win both the Prix
Goncourt and the Prix Medicis.
Prizes for Francophone literature outside France include the Grand Prix
de la Francophonie de l'Academie Francaise, and the Grand Prix Litteraire
d'Afrique Noire. French-speaking writers who have received the Nobel
Prize for Literature include Roger Martin du Gard, Andre Gide, Francois
Mauriac, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett and Claude Simon. In 1964 Sartre
refused to accept the prize.
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
NOTE ON PRESENTATION
In order to facilitate the reading of this volume, footnotes have been kept
to a minimum and, where possible, references have been included in
parentheses in the text itself. Where references are to items listed in the
Suggestions for further reading at the end of a chapter, the author's name
alone is given, followed directly by the page number(s) in the listed work.
Many novels are referred to briefly in the pages of this volume. In such
cases, only the author's name, the title of the novel, and the year of its
publication are given. However, in cases where textual references are made,
full publication details are given. Quotations given in French are accompanied by a translation unless they clearly present no difficulty to the
Anglophone reader. Translations, unless otherwise stated, are those of the
authors.
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006